“I can assure you that in reality, Friar Marcos has not told the truth in a single thing he has said.” - Francisco Vasquez de Coronado to Viceroy Mendoza, 1540
The game begins In Medias Res in a Central American rainforest with Nathan Drake, world traveling thief and explorer, approaching an ancient temple but noting an army by a man he notes as Dante, a “Son of a bitch (He’ll) see in hell.”
Climbing along the crumbling walls and dealing with Dante’s army until one of them tries to fire an RPG at Drake. We go back to two weeks earlier…
Nate is invited into a rainforest in Panama by longtime friend Jason Dante, a fellow thief though with a pension for spending his money (Case in point his shoes are made from sea-turtle, an endangered species).
Nate’s suspicion is raised when Dante drives him to a gated area with the sign KEEP OUT all over. Dante assures him they have permission to explore though when they come across a cut climbing rope, Dante grumbles about a Guerro.
This makes Nate nervous because Roberto Guerro is a fascist general who has resorted to drugs, kidnapping, and bombing the Panama Canal to fund his wars. Dante counters that he and his Revolutionaries lost the war ten years ago and they’re not going where the ex-general will be.
Dante takes Nate over to some ruins that when charcoal rubbings are done show that they aren’t Aztec or Mayan. The closest is Muisca though there’s no record of them being further north than Colombia. Thus Nate realizes this is the Kuna civilization.
Further in Dante explain how there are hundreds of square miles of old statues and ruins as they approach a gully.
Deeper into the jungle they get into a shootout with men that Dante believes to be poachers, though Nate voices his doubts. Sneaking past another gate put up by the IOA (International Office of Antiquities) guarding over a mass grave of 60 skeletons, with a spanish helmet that shows the emblem of Coronado’s expeditions from the 16th century.
A woman surprises them by pointing out the skeletons are murder victims. Dante calls the woman Chase, and she admits she followed them due to not trusting Dante, especially for bringing uninvited guests. She introduces herself as Marisa Chase, but gunshots in the distance forces Dante to get on the radio with Guerro.
Despite being left in the dark by Dante, and wants to know why Chase would be spying on him, he’s a partner after all. But Chase counters she’s as much a partner with him as the Spaniards were partners with the Kuna. Nate points to the Spanish skeletons, only for Chase to point out one flaw with that theory: There are no broken bones, and the Kuna used maces and clubs for battle. Nope, the Spaniards were poisoned, Chase had found arsenic in their teeth. This just gives Nate more questions than answers about why he’s in Panama.
Chase realizes that Dante did mention Nate, and shows a mysterious marker as to why he’s there. At first he thought it was a grave marker, but Nate realizes it’s not a Spanish symbol. Chase offers to be partners when (Not if) Dante cuts them both out of the treasure, with her even showing off a gold medallion that even Dante doesn’t know about. Seeing the medallion has Chihopotex (Goddess of fertility and birth) and her husband Mahuaquitex (God of warriors), with the back showing a temple to Itzicaltli (God of death), Nate tells her the symbol is Visigoth, which died with it’s last king in the 8th century. There are symbols around the marker like a ring, but before Nate can translate there’s an explosion.
Seeing there’s a gunfight with Guerro’s men coming in, Nate offers to Chase a gun, but she’s uncomfortable around them and refuses to use one. So Nate fights the soldiers by himself. To get away, Chase takes Nate through a shortcut by the uranium strip mines. Seeing all the men confirm Dante was lying about Guerro not being a problem.
Heading back to the road Nate and Dante came through, he and Chase find men dressed and equipped far differently from Guerro’s thugs so far, with her explaining to Nate that they’re mercenaries hired by Dante to guard the place. The first one they come across was excavating in an area Guerro denied Dante and Chase from searching, explaining his ire.
Returning to a bridge that had a few planks missing, they realize Guerro cut the ropes on the bridge (A recurring habit of his, cutting ropes) that causes Nate to end up on the wrong side of a waterfall away from Chase.
But climbing across some cliffsides reunites the two who return to where the jeep was…Only for it to be long gone, likely taken by Dante. Luckily Chase has her own jeep nearby but run into Dante being held at gunpoint by Guerro himself. Guerro and Nate introduce each other before the general calls Dante out for lying to him.
He said he was alone, yet he had a truck of his men stealing turquoise glyphs from the dig sites. When Dante tries to explain that his men ignored his orders and he wanted to show his partners some bones, Nate tries to leave since he just got there with Chase. One of the men frisk Chase and find her amulet, surprising even Dante. Nate tries to fight back but gets knocked out by Guerro.
Nate wakes up without his gear in a burning warehouse. Climbing to escape, he follows Chase’s voice to reunite with her. She admits to having started the fire as a distraction after escaping while Guerro was interrogating Dante. Nate decides they should go save him but Chase is adamant about getting her amulet back.
Climbing around the burning warehouse, they briefly get separated by a crashing jeep. Reuniting they spot Guerro berate a guard who is just standing around searching for Nate and Chase. When Dante is dragged in, Guerro is ready to continue a talk with him.
Going deeper into the compound, Nate watches as Guerro starts throwing his men over the railing for perceived incompetence while his new partner Dante tells him they need the two escapees alive. Chase is holding out on truths, and Nate found more in ten minutes than an “Old Man” found in twenty years.
Confused, Nate still helps Chase check wherever they can until having to check Guerro’s office. Inside Nate sees maps, photographs, and various papers. Chase laments that Dante gave away the entirety of the “Field Office,” making Nate’s frustration boil over. The reason why he doesn’t want to call Chase his partner? Because he’s being kept too deep in the dark. Everything in that room had to have taken years to collect, and Guerro’s too busy fighting to resume his tyranny, Dante’s a grave robber who wouldn’t put in this much effort, and Nate only just arrived. So who is making these discoveries? What is Chase’s “Long Story” that she refuses to tell him?
If she wants Nate to trust her, Chase will have to explain why he’s flying blind. So, she gives Nate a picture of an older man, her grandfather Vincent Perez. She tells him that twenty years ago the miners discovered all the ruins and the IOA sent Vincent to be in charge of the dig sites. Nate puts together that the Amulet was found by him and that’s why it’s so important. Chase concludes with the discovery last year that Vincent contracted terminal cancer and to finish his job he had to hire someone with connections to help deal with Guerro. Nate figures out she means Dante, and Chase admits that three months ago Vincent just vanished and Nate knows Dante may be a thief but he’s no murderer. Either way, he gave all of Vincent’s hard work to Guerro.
So Nate decides that they’ll take what they can and take pictures of what can’t be taken. And of course, Chase still can’t find her amulet until the pair manage to open a safe and get it back. But while escaping, Chase tries to hide from Guerro and some of his soldiers in a truck full of dynamite, which gets driven out by the same soldiers. Hanging in the air, Nate hears Dante tell Guerro they don’t need the two runaways, spewing insults about Nate and Dante.
Nate finally escapes the compound and saves Chase from being strangled by a soldier that found her. Nate saves her but they end up pinned by a turret, so Nate shoots the truck of dynamite right next to the turret.
Making it out of the compound, the pair are greeted by Dante, who holds them at gunpoint until Drake drops his guns. Frustrated, Dante calls them out for burning the whole base up and his boots are ruined. This becomes Chase’s Berserk Button, because he stole everything her grandfather had worked on and handed it to Guerro, and all he cares about are his unnecessary boots?
Chase gets so mad she pushes at him, accidentally sending him into the river. Realizing what she did leads to a quick apology, though Nate assures that he’s swam through worse. Even then it doesn’t matter because Guerro’s men are still looking for them.
Running away till at the edge of a small cliff, Nate and Chase are cornered by Guerro and his men. His demands are for the amulet, and when Chase points out it was found by her grandfather, Guerro points out that it was found on his land, using a local saying that Nate translates, “When the box is open, even the most honorable is a thief.”
This impresses Guerro since he didn’t know Nate was fluent in Spanish. Nate offers to help him instead, because Dante might make money but he’s an idiot. To prove a point, he takes Chase’s backpack and throws her into the river. Guerro drops his guard, which Nate uses to hit him with the backpack and jump in after Chase.
Swept up in the rapids, the pair end up shot off the edge of a waterfall, and once landing safely Chase lunges at Nate for giving Guerro her amulet, only for him to show he had it in his pocket the whole time.
In Vincent’s office, Nate tries to assure Chase there’s no shame in quitting, but his warnings fall on deaf ears. He can see the signs of how this ends because while Dante can cut his losses and move on, Guerro will not stop until he has the amulet. But Chase retorts that while this might be about the gold for Dante and Guerro, even Nate himself, to her it’s what her grandfather spent twenty years of his life being mocked for his theories that would’ve made him the next Heinrich Schliemann, the man who discovered Troy.
But suddenly, Nate spots a red book in Chase’s hand and pulls out the charcoal rubbing of the Visigoth symbol. Looking at them together, he gasps, “He found them.”
Seeing the matching symbol, Chase realizes Vincent kept one big secret, even from her as a precaution with Dante. And being his “Inner sanctum,” which she was the only one to have access to, Nate points out what was so familiar about the symbols.
He calls them the Sete Cidades, an obscure religious order with roots to the Visigoths and an offshoot of Arianism. Nate quickly makes a note he’s not talking about Nazi Aryanism, and explains that when Spain fell to the Moors in the 8th century, seven bishops set sail with the riches of Spain to find the seven perfect cities. The Sete Cidades were formed specifically to find these seven lost cities of gold.
And the grave marker? It was about gold, the seven lost cities, the Aztec and Mayan myths of lost cities like El Dorado. So those soldiers who were poisoned were looking for those cities, but not alone. With one of the parchments held to a light (One of the more controversial parts of the PS Vita for not functioning), Nate makes out a riddle.
“The Sword of Stephen shall bear witness to our sacrifice in the Chamber of the Seven Fathers.”
What that means is something only Vincent knew. Since he’s been missing a few weeks and Nate now knows for sure Dante didn’t do anything, that means he went looking for the Chamber. And with holy men, they need a place to retreat to study, worship, and bury their dead. With how underground the order was and how undiscovered Central America was, it would have to be by the coast.
Nate agrees to help Chase find the answers on one condition: That they be partners.
Arriving at the coast, Chase spots her grandfather’s truck, but Nate can tell from the wear and tear it’s been there for weeks. Chase assures she knows, he didn’t tell her where he’d be going because there was no coming back. The only location that sticks out nearby is a sinkhole, so the pair start heading in.
Deep in the catacombs, they find a door guarded by what Chase first thought were gargoyles, but Nate corrects that they’re actually grotesques, chimera since there’s no water spouts made to ward off evil spirits. While inspecting one of the two, Chase notices the heads move, making them the locks for the door. But on the other side they are ambushed by Guerro’s men who had followed behind them. Nate fights them off and finds a lock with the code linked to several other chimera statues. Going to each statue to get a charcoal rubbing of symbols on each statue, the pair opens the lock to go deeper in.
Inside they find seven statues with golden items associated with them. Chase spots her grandfather’s journal showing he made it inside as well. Inside Vincent wrote of a “De Niza” being a secret Sete Cidades priest.
She admits the name sounds familiar, so Nate explains they’re talking about Friar Marcos De Niza, the scout for Coronado and Esteban the Moor that sent them on a wild goose chase through Arizona and New Mexico into Nebraska instead of lost treasures while claiming to have found Cibola, one of the seven lost cities of gold. “The Liar Friar,” the history books call Friar Marcos.
So why the lie? And why end up underground? Nate points out that maybe he didn’t lie. Because if they had gone south they would’ve found the dig site where the Spanish soldiers were sacrificed, not murdered, as the riddle instructed. But Marcos’ diary pages inside warn that anyone seeking this treasure out will find themselves in hell. The rest of the pages are burnt but Marcos tells of a sacrifice on a throne of gold while confessing to have poisoned the Spanish soldiers.
So whatever this treasure hunt results in, Friar Marcos was terrified enough to spend the rest of his life a liar, but what? Whatever it was, Nate decided they needed to find the Sword of Stephen since it was meant to guard the “Entrance.” Nate notices that the sword of Stephen could’ve been talking about Esteban the Moor, or rather Estevanico, “Stephen the Black,” who died during the scouting mission.
Esteban is buried with his sword in the chamber, buried with the key. And Vincent’s notes say the statues and their placements are the key, but he’s gotten too weak to be able to move them. With all seven statues moved, a door opens up deeper into the chambers. Chase goes on ahead while Nate climbs down a rope he tied to rappel down. All they need to find is a tomb with Arabic since Esteban is from Morocco.
All of a sudden, Chase screams in panic and Nate rushes to her, finding her grandfather’s dead body lying on the ground. Chase puts a blanket over him since she knows this is where he would’ve wanted to be buried. Leaving her to grieve, Nate finds Esteban’s crypt and opens it up…only to find a sword but there is no body. With symbols on the blade, Nate makes charcoal rubbings to show puzzle pieces.
As the pair start to leave, Nate assures Chase they never would’ve gotten this far without Vincent, and when they find Quivira, it’ll be his discovery. But she corrects that it was found by the three of them, partners after all. Though now Nate wonders if this treasure hunting life is what she really wants, or if it’s what her grandfather wanted her to do. All of a sudden, Dante appears, who takes Chase hostage for being pushed into the river.
He had followed them, and found the two getting closer as signs of double crossing behind his back. When Nate points out his deal with Guerro, Dante reminds him that the man is a lunatic…In earshot of said lunatic. Guerro doesn’t hesitate to push Dante down the edge to be with Nate. The general gives an ultimatum, give him the Sword of Stephen, or the girl dies.
Nate throws the sword at them, and he, Dante, and Chase try to run, but she gets knocked out by Guerro’s men. Despite the tension between the two, Nate and Dante make their escape and despite their best efforts (As well as the two being unable to stop arguing now), Chase still gets taken away by Guerro.
To try to buy the thieves some time before the whole chamber is destroyed by Guerro’s explosives, Chase agrees to translate the symbols on the blade for him if he lets the duo go. Surrounded by the fires of the gunfights and watching Guerro take Chase away in his fleet of trucks, Nate and Dante are left all by themselves.
They begin a degrading argument with Nate furious that Guerro was even brought into what was a simple job. But Dante arrogantly believes everyone has been trying to cut him out of his shares because of his connections. Connections that’ll let him hire mercenaries out of the US.
Nate counters that all that’ll do is get Chase killed but all Dante cares about is having money and spending it. And all Nate has to show for his life as a thief is the Francis Drake ring around his neck. This gets Nate mad enough to pull a gun on his former friend, but drops it just as quickly. Dante decides there’s no more contract, and Chase is no longer his problem, so he’s free to go crying to Sully.
“I don’t need Sully…” Nathan Drake says. But two weeks later…
“Sully, I need you.” Nathan Drake says to his longtime friend and mentor, Victor “Sully” Sullivan. Sully figured that much, but what’s so bad he had to fly all the way into the middle of nowhere. Nate brings up Dante and Guerro, two men Sully wants nothing to do with. But the big question is where are they going with Chase?
With the charcoal rubbing puzzle pieces Nate makes a map of a snake-like river that leads to a pyramid, the gateway to Quivira. The city of gold catches Sully’s attention, but Nate clarifies that why he’s so interested in helping is because Chase and her grandfather spent years looking for it, and got swept up in the passion. To thieves like Nate, Sully, and Dante it’s business, but for Chase and Vincent it was so much more.
Sully points out he’s got nothing to worry about, because Chase was dealing with those two chowderheads well before Nate was brought in and is smart enough to keep herself useful enough to keep living. But with no army, they can only get in through the river, and Sully knows a guy who can outfit them with no questions asked.
Three days later, the duo are paddling a canoe down a piranha infested river with mosquitos constantly biting at them to sneak up on Guerro. Despite this, Sully is able to regale Nate with his stories of the many past girlfriends of his. But during the paddling they take a wrong turn and almost go off a waterfall, they get away but the boat gets a hole during a gunfight with Guerro’s men and sinks with the supplies at the aqueduct port.
Heading deeper into the ruins they fight through Guerro’s men and after a temporary division caused by some of the more unstable ruins, though at the serpent gate entrance Sully notes he’s starting to hear helicopters coming in. Even weirder deeper in the jungle they start to hear gunfire. But who’s shooting at who?
After seeing the helicopters fly by, Sully is now really not seeing something right. The helicopters were YH-1 Cherokees, something Guerro should not have. Nate realizes that Dante really did bring an army into Panama. Nate didn’t think he was serious, but Sully points out the man never kids about spending his money.
Now having to fight both Guerro and Dante’s men, Nate and Sully head deeper into the ruins until a massive leap sends Sully to the bottom of some rocks, with a few scrapes but a hurt leg that makes him have to stay behind. Fortunately, Sully gets the idea to steal one of Dante’s helicopters to fly out, so instead he’s just getting a ride for everyone. Good thing he served in the Navy and got a pilot’s license.
Now alone, Nate finds himself back to the moment at the beginning. In Medias Res is now complete.
Despite almost being hit with an RPG, Nate survives and continues fighting his way through the ruins until he comes across an entrance with a carving of a snake's mouth around it. “No wonder Marcos thought this was the gateway to hell.” He notes.
Deep inside the mountain caverns, Nate finds Guerro’s men are in a losing battle against Dante’s mercenaries. Eventually he finds Chase trying (And failing) to stop Guerro’s men from placing explosives on the support columns to the caverns. Finally reunited at the ornate entrance to Quivira, but Nate tells her with all the fighting between Guerro and Dante they don’t have much time to leave.
But Chase isn’t leaving. She points to the entrance, telling him this was what Marcos called the Doorway of the Gods. If she finds proof Marcos was there then it’ll validate everything her grandfather worked towards. As she talks Nate keeps trying to get her attention before finally calling her Marisa. She stops to tell him to not call her that, but she clarifies she understands what Nate wants to tell her. That it isn’t worth her life, but for her it is worth it. She pulls out the amulet to show she doesn’t want this to be handed over to Guerro or Dante, but Nate has an epiphany. In the center of the doorway there is a circular spot, similar in width to the amulet, making him see it’s actually the key to Quivira.
Before going through the opened door, they pack up a couple backpacks to be safe. Deeper inside they start to find bodies, mummified bodies. The people of Quivira had collapsed under deformed bodies and never got buried when they died. From how well preserved they are, the pair can tell one thing: They died in utter agony, but how? Birth defects, maybe sacrificed to the gods?
They don’t know, but Chase wonders what Friar Marcos thought when he stumbled on this ghastly sight. Deeper inside, they find what Nate calls the Lake of Ghosts, an underground lake of glacier melt, some of the coldest water on Earth. Finding a canoe the pair set sail. As they paddle along Nate starts to learn more about Chase. The reason she was raised by her grandfather is because her parents were killed in an armed robbery, which also explains her fear of guns despite being too young to remember all the details.
When Chase inquires about Nate, he chuckles no lake’s big enough to tell his story. So now they need to focus on what they need to find in Quivira, which Chase notes from Vincent’s journals that there’s a throne of gold meant to symbolize the center of hell.
Eventually they reach the end of the river, and after solving a puzzle on the tiled floors, they reach the heart of Quivira. A cavern with walls lined with gold molded to look like veins with a whole city at the bottom. “The Golden Abyss,” Nate blurts out in surprise. The name comes from a report Friar Marcos made to Sete Cidades describing the cavern with walls of golden blood as a golden abyss guarding the gate to hell.
Climbing down into Quivira, where every building is ornate and golden. Eventually they find in the center of the ruins is a golden throne with a mummified body lounging on it. Inspecting the Throne of Gold, the pair note the body has 16th Century Moorish clothes, meaning this was Esteban. But his body is so well preserved for some reason, and Nate can see he was stabbed in the heart. He pulls the sword out and cleaning it shows that it’s a 16th Century Spanish ritual dagger, the proof of Friar Marcos coming to Quivira.
The liar friar was a Sete Cidades who believed in sacrifices, so he murdered Esteban to seal the gate of hell Nate notes. Hearing explosions in the distance, the pair start putting gold into their backpacks when they hear a scratching noise in Chase’s backpack. Nate pulls out the cause of the noise: A Geiger Counter, that Chase had turned on.
Nate starts walking in circles before he realizes just why Quivira became a lost city. The geiger counter was brought in for the strip mine from the burial grounds, there were uranium deposits there and that must mean they go all throughout the mountains. They realize with horror that the gold of Quivira has been radioactive for hundreds, maybe thousands, of years!
All of a sudden Dante and a few of his men come in, with Dante clapping and congratulating Nate for learning the obvious. Nate’s confused on how they got past the river when he and Chase took the only boat, but Dante tells him he’s smarter while taking his guns. And then he takes the Friar Marcos dagger and throws it away from Chase.
When Dante grabs the Geiger Counter he starts talking about how it’s almost like music, making Nate demand to know how he already knew about the poisoned gold? When they had Chase’s amulet it had caused a reaction with the Geiger Counter Guerro had on him.
Nate’s disturbed by how Dante is clearly still going to take the gold anyway. Chase tries to warn how insane that is to be put in the world market. Jewelry, Coins, Dental Work, all that will cause millions of deaths, with Nate agreeing. But Dante doesn’t see the problem since he thinks it’s low grade and the statues and figurines will probably end up in museums, and he thinks nobody goes to museums anymore.
Nate points to the deformed bodies of the Quivira people, and Dante just thinks they thought it’d be worth it to have all the gold in the mountain for a century. Nate lunges at Dante and the two get into a fistfight after he shoots the mercenaries. During the fighting, Dante gets so desperate to kill Nate that he pulls out a butterfly knife to get the job done.
But Nate beats him and throws the knife away. Dante swears that they could’ve been partners and had all the gold. Nate tells him he can keep it, but he’s going to set off the explosives and bury Quivira so that it’ll never be found again. Dante doubts he’s got it in him to willingly bury anyone, even a former friend like him, alive. When Chase walks by, Dante rants about how she’s manipulative, playing everyone to kill each other while she doesn’t lift a finger out of self-righteousness.
Chase responds that that’s how he is, and not everyone is selfish like he is. The pair leaves as Dante starts to rave about how they’ll have to fight through the rest of his and Guerro’s men to escape, before devolving into screaming about how Sully made Nate soft and always leaving empty handed.
- Jason Dante: Empty Handed! Empty Handed!
Climbing out the pair finds Dante’s men, and Chase decides that if they’re gonna live she needs to finally use a gun to help out. The pair fights through the last of the soldiers until they return to the detonators. But when Nate is holding the detonator, he realizes he can’t bring himself to bury a man alive, even one as repulsive as Dante. Chase points out that Quivira is pure poison, its amulet is clearly what had given Vincent his cancer. So she pushes the big red button instead.
The pair run as the entire cavern collapses around them and fight off what remains of Dante’s men. Eventually, a column collapses on Chase’s leg and when Nate tries to lift it, Guerro shows up with an RPG. Frustrated, Nate tries to reason with Guerro, pointing to the whole mountain about to be on top of them, but the General won’t listen. He points to the RPG, all that’s left of his proud army. And Guerro tells Nate that a general with no army is nothing. He will die but he’s taking Nate and the senorita with him!
Nate calls him out on his self pity over being beaten by a New Jersey punk like Dante before charging in to fight him one last time. Climbing up to be on the same level the two get into a fist fight, after which Nate decides to get him mad.
“You know why that revolution of yours failed? ‘Es un cobarde…’” He tells him. Guerro finds him pathetic for calling him a coward, but Nate calls him another worthless thug like the rest of his pathetic mob of an army. Guerro now gets mad enough to charge at Nate, only for him to dodge and Guerro runs onto a collapsing bridge, falling to his death.
Nate rushes back to Chase and uses a plywood to lift the rock off of her leg. Now hobbled, Nate helps her walk while the pair continue to escape. However, when they reach a dead end, Sully shows up and throws a rope down to them.
The trio escape and Sully manages to make a splint for Chase’s leg before checking on their helicopter ride. Before setting off, Nate spots that Chase’s amulet is still in her backpack, and offers it to her. But Chase decides that Friar Marcos was right about the gold of Quivira, that it all belongs in hell, and throws it into the chasm below. With Chase now in need of a new way to rewrite history, she decides she’ll need to start traveling the world again. The two are about to share an Almost Kiss before Sully interrupts that they need to take a ride home.
The game ends with the three bantering, such as Chase allowing Sully to call her Marisa, seeing as he reminds her of Vincent, and Sully starts regaling them with another tale of one of his old girlfriends.
